


oblivion

by pocoloki



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15871926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocoloki/pseuds/pocoloki
Summary: Four years ago, Victor Katsuki-Nikiforov was lost on a research mission in the furthest reaches of the known universe. Haunted by the loss and plagued by nightly recollections of their last moments together, Yuuri will stop at nothing to bring him back.Victor is alive (he thinks) and alone (he knows). Trapped in a place outside of time and between universes and desperate to return to his life and love back on Earth, he is forced to seek help in an unexpected place.





	oblivion

In his dreams, the tether slips from his grasp.

He sees a flash of blue, of fear, behind a panic-fogged visor, and hears his own scream echoing in his ears as his world is torn from him, tossed about like a ragdoll by the merciless force of gravity before vanishing, swallowed in bright blue light.

Blue like his eyes, those eyes that had held such terror in those final moments. Those eyes that he will never see again.

In his dreams, he screams and screams and screams and screams, until his agonized wails are reduced to nothing but voiceless whimpers and then, and then-

He wakes, sobbing into his pillow in an empty bed.

Yuuri misses the days when waking from a nightmare brought a sense of relief. When he was able to catch his breath upon waking from whatever horrors his subconscious mind had shown him and realize, _it’s not real, it was just a dream, none of it happened, everything is okay_.

He misses the days when he didn’t _have_ to calm himself down after nightmares, when there were arms around him the moment he opened his eyes, arms pulling him close, a warm body holding him, the softest voice in his ear reassuring him, telling him he was safe and loved. He misses that most of all.

But those days are over now. There are no arms around him, there is no sense of relief, no escape from the nightmare that plays in his head, over and over every night.

Because it wasn’t just a dream.

Victor is gone, really gone, truly gone, and he can’t wake up from this reality he’s living in, this reality where the man he loves was torn from his grasp, ripped violently out of the known universe, lost to him, probably forever. He can’t escape the pain, the constant dull ache in his chest in the shape of his husband. He can’t tell himself it’s okay, because it’s not, because it will likely never be okay again.

There’s no escape, no denial.

The nightmare he’s living is real, and worst of all… it’s all his fault.

* * *

In his dreams, he sees the man with the silver hair.

It isn’t every night. Some nights, his mama tucks him into bed with a kiss and he dreams of other things, like dinosaurs or flying puppies or big scary monsters chasing him. Other nights, he dreams of nothing at all. But the man always comes back eventually.

The man looks strange, but not in a scary way. Just different. Like the people who come to visit the onsen sometimes, the ones his papa calls foreigners. The foreigners are often loud, drinking too much and making demands in broken Japanese, or not bothering to use Japanese at all. Many of them have unpleasant looks about them, causing Yuuri to hide behind his mama’s legs when they come to coo over him.

The silver-haired man is not unpleasant, or loud. When he speaks, his Japanese is perfect, if strangely accented, and his voice is soft and kind. He doesn’t make demands. He only ever talks, asks Yuuri about his day, plays games with him if Yuuri asks.

Yuuri is happy when he dreams about the silver-haired man. But sometimes the man looks so sad. One night, Yuuri is telling him about his first ballet class with Minako-sensei when he notices a single tear slide down his cheek. Yuuri falls silent at the sight; he’s never seen a grown-up cry before.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and the man looks startled for a moment, his hand flying to his cheek before he even seems to realize he was crying in the first place.

“Oh,” he says, smiling a strange smile as he wipes the tear away. “I’m sorry. I’m fine, Yuuri, really. You were telling me about Minako-san’s studio…?”

Yuuri feels troubled, reminded of Mari when she gets sad but doesn’t want to say why. “My papa always says you should talk about it if you’re sad.”

The man laughs. “Your papa is a wise man.” His smile falls, and he draws his knees into his chest, looking sadder than ever. “I really am fine, Yuuri. I just get a bit lonely sometimes.”

“... Lonely?” Yuuri had never considered that dream-people _could_ be lonely. “Don’t you have a family? Or friends?”  

“I do,” the man says quietly. “But they all live very far away, somewhere I can’t see them.”

The man tilts his head down, and Yuuri can no longer see his face behind a curtain of silver fringe. He wishes he could do something to help. His mama gives him hugs when he gets sad, but Yuuri knows from several failed games of tag that you can’t touch dream-people. So instead, he sits down next to the man and gathers up all his courage.

“Then I will be your friend!”

The man looks up, surprised. Bolstered by the temporary absence of sadness in his eyes, Yuuri continues.

“Yuuko-chan is my friend! And Minako-sensei is my friend, even though she’s my teacher now! And she’s even older than you, which means that you can be my friend too!”

To Yuuri’s delight, the man actually laughs, a small, affectionate smile playing across his features.

“So? Can we be friends?”

“Of course we can, Yuuri,” he says. “I’d like that a lot.”

When he wakes the next morning, he realizes he does not know his new friend’s name, or even if dream-people _have_ names. He asks his mama and papa at breakfast, but they just smile and ruffle his hair affectionately. Mari calls him a weirdo and tells him to name his own imaginary friend.

Yuuri thinks it would be quite rude to do that, so he decides to simply wait and ask the man the next time he sees him. For three nights, Yuuri sleeps dreamlessly, but on the fourth, the man appears again, looking far happier than he had before.

Not wanting to forget again, Yuuri makes sure to ask his name as soon as he appears.

“Victor,” the man smiles. “My name is Victor.”

“Victor,” Yuuri repeats, the syllables sounding slightly different on his tongue, but the man keeps smiling anyways, and they spend the rest of the dream talking and playing like they always do.

When Yuuri wakes, he feels happy. His friend _does_ have a name, after all.

“Victor,” he tries again, still half-asleep but content. “Victor.” 

* * *

“ _Victor_!” Yuuri screams, sitting bolt upright in bed, tears streaming down his face.

His hand is still outstretched, as it had been in the dream, as it had been the day he lost him. He can still feel Victor’s tether in his grip like a phantom pain, feel it slipping out of his grasp, feel his utter helplessness in the face of the Aurora’s pull.

If he’d only been stronger, if he’d only held on for a few more seconds, they could have saved him. Mere seconds after Yuuri’s grip had faltered, the Aria’s engines had come back online, pushing them back out of the Aurora’s gravitational field.

Just a few seconds longer, and they could have pulled him back to safety. Just a few seconds longer, and Victor would still be here with him. But he’d failed. The tether had slipped away, and Victor with it, lost to the void, possibly forever.

_Just a few seconds longer._

Yuuri lets his outstretched hand drop down to the mattress, buries his head in his knees, and cries.

“Victor,” he sobs, curling up as if making himself smaller will ease the terrible ache of guilt in his chest. “Victor, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

For a long while, the only sound to be heard in the bedroom is Yuuri’s weeping, interspersed every so often with sobbed-out apologies to a man who can no longer hear them. Then, there is a creak, and the familiar tingling of tags, before something cold and wet touches the inside of Yuuri’s elbow.

He sits up and sniffles, blinking his tears away to see two pairs of big brown eyes looking up at him. Makkachin stands on her hind legs, front paws resting against Yuuri’s side of the mattress, whining softly as she nudges him again.

“Hey, girl,” Yuuri murmurs, giving her a quick pat on the head. “It’s okay, you can come up.”

She does so immediately, hopping up onto the bed and immediately curling up on Victor’s- on the empty side.

“You too,” Yuuri says to the smaller dog, still on the floor. His front paws rest against the base of the bed, and he whines in frustration, too small to hop up on his own.

Yuuri bends down to pick him up, cradling his tiny, fluffy form close to his chest. “Morning, Vicchan,” he tells the little poodle, his voice shaking only slightly.

He gives the dog a kiss on the forehead, and in turn, Vicchan stretches up as far as he can to lick some of the tears off Yuuri’s cheeks. Yuuri lets out a giggle that sounds just a little too close to a sob as he hugs his dog.

He isn’t the Victor Yuuri needs right now, to kiss away his tears and reassure him that everything will be alright, but he’ll do.

* * *

Yuuri is so excited the night of his thirteenth birthday that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep. A soft snoring from across the room emanates from the dog bed his parents had put in, and the sound is so cute he’s half-tempted to get out of bed and cuddle the tiny creature within to kingdom come, but he forces himself to stay put.

The puppy needs his sleep, after all, and so does Yuuri. There’s someone important he needs to share his good news with.

It takes him a while to calm himself enough to properly drift off, but soon enough his eyes slip shut and he finds himself in a familiar place.

His dreams always begin here, in an empty white space, surrounded by a dense fog. He takes a step forward, then another, then another. It never seems to matter which direction he goes; as long as he keeps walking, he always manages to find what - or rather, _who_ \- he’s looking for.

Tonight, it only takes a little bit of searching before a familiar shape becomes visible through the fog. A smile spreads across Yuuri’s face and he picks up the pace, jogging the final few steps between him and his friend.

“Victor! Victor, guess what!”

As soon as Victor comes into view, the smile falls from Yuuri’s face. It’s a bad day. Victor is huddled on the floor, staring dead-eyed into the whiteness that surrounds him.

This isn’t the first time Yuuri has found him like this. It isn’t a common occurrence, but every so often the Victor who Yuuri encounters in his dreams isn’t his usual chipper self. He seems distant, sad, afraid, any number of things before he notices Yuuri’s presence, only to immediately snap out of it when he realizes he’s not alone.

Today is no exception. As soon as he catches sight of Yuuri, the empty look leaves his eyes to be replaced by a brilliant, heart-shaped smile.

“Yuuri!”  He uncurls from his position on the floor, stands, and waves as Yuuri approaches. Despite his smile, Yuuri can just make out a flicker of something terribly sad in those bright blue eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks, slowing down as he approaches.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Victor insists, as he always does when Yuuri plucks up the courage to ask. “Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

Yuuri’s concern for his friend vanishes in a moment, eclipsed by his excitement. “My parents got me a puppy!”

His smile brightens, seeming more genuine now. “Oh, Yuuri, that’s wonderful! Happy birthday!”

Yuuri feels his brow furrow. “How did you know it was my-”

“So, tell me all about it!” Victor plows over his question in a burst of exuberance, sitting down cross-legged on the floor and patting the ground for Yuuri to sit, too. “What’s its name? What breed is it?”

“He’s… he’s a miniature poodle.” Yuuri says, feeling his cheeks flush preemptively to his next words. “I named him, uh… well, I named him Victor. After you.”

The heat in his cheeks spreads to his whole face as soon as the words leave his lips, and he looks at the white floor beneath them. God, what an embarrassing thing to say! It’s the truth, of course, but still, what on earth had possessed him to admit it right to Victor’s face?

Mari had been the first to make the connection when Yuuri had announced the puppy’s name at breakfast the day before.

“Victor?” she’d asked, not unkindly. “Wasn’t that the name of your imaginary friend when you were little?”

He had learned long ago that dream-people were not a normal occurrence, that not everyone had a stranger who spoke to them in their sleep on a regular basis. He had also learned that repeatedly talking about dream-people seemed to lead those around him to believe he had an overactive imagination, or worse.

So, Yuuri had feigned ignorance. “What imaginary friend?” he had scoffed. “I just like the name, is all.”

Mari had raised her eyebrows, but had otherwise kept her skepticism to herself - to Yuuri’s immense relief- and the subject had been dropped as Vicchan the poodle rolled adorably on his back to beg for belly rubs.

The thought strikes Yuuri now that he really should have said the same to Victor. Claimed that he just liked the name, or that that was the name the shelter had given him already, or just made up a different name to tell Victor entirely. Any of that would be less embarrassing than admitting he’d named his dog after the man!

He’s still flushed red and looking determinedly at the floor, willing himself to wake up so that he can get out of this awkward situation, when Victor finally speaks.

“After me, huh?” This is not the response Yuuri had been expecting, prompting him to finally remove his gaze from the floor and back to the man sitting across from him. His eyes are distant again, something strange flickering behind them. It’s not sadness like it was before, it’s… something else. Curiosity, perhaps? Suspicion? “I’d always assumed it was a coincidence…”

Before Yuuri can ask what he means by that, Victor snaps out of whatever stupor he had been in, that same wide smile on his face. “Sorry, Yuuri! I don’t know what came over me, there.”

“What do you mean by-?” 

“Nothing, nothing,” he insists, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “Just me being silly. Victor is an excellent name for a poodle, Yuuri. Does he know any tricks yet?”

Yuuri can’t help but feel like there’s something Victor isn’t telling him, but he’s too excited to talk about his new puppy to pursue it any further. Instead, he spends the rest of the night telling Victor about every facet of his new puppy’s existence, from the early struggles of housetraining to all the tricks he wants his Vicchan to learn.

Victor seems only too content to talk about dogs, his face growing sad only when he peppers in anecdotes about training his own dog, Makkachin. But as the morning approaches, and Yuuri starts to feel the telltale tug of wakefulness pulling at him, Victor grows serious again.  

“Yuuri,” he begins with uncertainty, face half-hidden behind his bangs. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You said you named your new puppy after me” Yuuri nods, flushing again involuntarily. But his embarrassment is cut short by what Victor asks next. “Does that mean… do you remember this, when you wake up? Remember me?”

“Yeah.”

“…Oh.”

The look on Victor’s face is as raw as it is inscrutable. The mist is filling his vision again, but Yuuri tries to read him anyways. Is he angry? Disappointed? Shocked? Before he has time to figure it out, Victor is completely shrouded in grey once more.

Yuuri can hear something distantly, the faint beep of his alarm clock pulling him back to the real world. It nearly drowns out the last words Victor says before he wakes.

_“...Why didn't you stop me?”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Rina, Raiza, and Tatiana for beta/proofreading and just generally putting up with me stressing tf out over this fic. Y'all are the real MVPs <3.


End file.
